See main: Purposeless universe hypothesis

“Today we know that the cosmos is simply a flux of purposeless rearrangement amidst which man is a wholly negligible incident or accident.”

— Howard Lovecraft (1936), “Religion and Ethics”, letter to Natalie Wooley, May 2

“Space and time have always existed and always will exist. This is the only legitimate axiom in all of philosophy.”

— Howard Lovecraft (1916), “Letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, Ira Cole, and Maurice Moe”, Aug 8 [1]

“How do we know that that form of atomic and molecular motion we call ‘life’ is the highest of all forms? Perhaps the dominate creature—the most rational and god-like of all beings—is an invisible gas. Or perhaps it is a flaming and effulgent mass of molten stardust. Who can say that men have souls while rocks have none?”

— Howard Lovecraft (1916), “Letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, Ira Cole, and Maurice Moe”, Aug 8 [1]

“I admit that I am very much interested in the relation I bear on the things about me—the time relation, the space relation, and the causative relation. I desire to know approximately what my life is in terms of history—human, terrestrial, solar, and cosmical; what my magnitude may be in terms of extension, -- terrestrial, solar, and cosmical; and above all, what may be my manner of linkage to the general system—in what way, through what agency, and to what extent, the obvious guiding forces of creation act upon me and govern my existence. And if there be any less obvious forces, I desire to know them and their relation to me as well.”

— Howard Lovecraft (1918), “Letter to Maurice Moe”, May 18

“Morality has nothing to do with any particular form of religion. Morality is the adjustment of matter to its environment—the natural arrangement of molecules. More especially it may be considered as dealing with organic molecules. Conventionally it is the science of reconciling the animal homo (more or less) sapiens to the forces and conditions with which he is surrounded.”

— Howard Lovecraft (1918), “Letter to Maurice Moe”, May 15 [1]

“Realistic analysis, favored by history and by diffusive scientific leanings which now embraced Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley and other various other pioneers, was checked by my aversion for realistic literature. I ceased my literal adherence to Epicurus and Lucretius, and reluctantly dismissed free-will forever in favor of determinism. The Peace Conference, Friedrich Nietzsche, Samuel Butler, Henry Mencken, and other influences have perfected my cynicism.”

— Howard Lovecraft (1922), “A Confession of Unfaith”; a teenage Alfred Galpin, of note, in c.1915, introduced Lovecraft to Nietzsche (Ѻ)

“My attitude has always been cosmic, and I looked on man as if from another planet. He was merely an interesting species presented for study and classification.”

— Howard Lovecraft (1922), “A Confession of Unfaith” (see: advanced perspective)

“All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory, I am an ‘agnostic’, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classified, practically and provisionally, as an ‘atheist’. The chances of theism’s truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pendant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else.”

— Howard Lovecraft (1932), “Letter to Robert E. Howard”, Aug 16 [1] (Ѻ)

“All notions of cosmic consciousness and purpose, and of the importance of man in the limitless pattern of the universe, are plainly myths born of the imperfect information of man’s early days.”

— H.P. Lovecraft (c.1930) [2]